China changes its rule book

In their recent Community Week article, our SJ Berwin colleagues have written about recent reforms in Chinese law that allow for private actions against government bodies for abuse of administrative power. The article notes that prior to this month’s changes, the only recourse that private parties had in relation to competition law concerns was making a complaint to anti-monopoly enforcement authorities. Under Article 53 of China’s Administrative Procedure Law (“APL”), a private party is now able to challenge not only a decision of the Chinese Government, but also the law or regulation upon which the decision is based.

The changes are of particular interest because they:

mark the first time that the APL has been amended since it was introduced in 1989; and

will serve to promote awareness of the rule of law within China’s various government bodies.

This appears to be in line with Xinhua’s reporting’s (Chian’s official news agency) that the key theme of the Chinese Government’s 2014 agenda is to advance the rule of law and to promote “administration by law”.

These reforms will be effective from 1 May 2015 and we will watch with interest to see how quickly private parties put these new rules to the test.